Senator Marshall: We Are Prepared to Protect the American Beef Supply

Senator Marshall Joins Bloomberg

Washington - U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), joined Bloomberg's Balance of Power with Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz to discuss eradicating the New World Screwworm, addressing rising costs in the agriculture sector, the confirmation of Todd Blanche, FISA, and another reconciliation passage.

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On confirming Todd Blanche for Attorney General:

"Well, look, I think this will continue to be a 'skins and shirts' basketball game that we're playing - it's the NBA finals tonight as well, so it's a 'skins and shirts' basketball game. The Republicans will support the nominee; the Democrats won't; there will be lots of pomp and circumstance and people posturing. But I tell you what, he came to a Republican conference and took about as much fire as I've ever seen someone from the cabinet come and take from a group of senators. He took both barrels on, he answered honestly, when he had an answer he gave an answer. If he didn't have one, he said, 'Look, I'm going to find the answer to that as well.' I think he's going to do a heck of a job as Attorney General."

On an anti-weaponization fund:

"Well, it's all about the details of this, right? Look, I don't want the federal government being weaponized against anybody. If it's a person that was convicted of a violent crime that attacked a police officer, of course not. But I do think there should be some type of recourse for people that have had the government weaponized against them; we've seen it happen - Christian groups, conservative groups targeted by the Internal Revenue Service. So, it does happen; it's all about the details of it. But I'm telling you, it's not on my priority list right now - my priorities right now are to get the House to finish the funding for ICE, for Border Patrol, and then let's get on down, let's figure out what to do with FISA, then let's get on to E15 and other things that matter. At least that matter to folks back home."

On FISA:

"Well, we could sure make this really, really complicated, and FISA is complicated - that's the challenge. Honestly, every morning I wake up, and I pray that I would do justice. And as I sit here and look at FISA, I see two conflicting situations here. Number one is, I want to make sure we have national security, maintain national security, which is why this FISA foreign surveillance court was set up. On the other hand is Americans' right to privacy. So, whenever you have a foreign person talking to an American citizen, that's where the challenge is. So, I think all we need to do is tighten up the language a little bit more. They're getting there. So, I think we just don't have the language quite right. I don't think the nomination of these people - we're not going to get the Democrats, many of them, to vote for anyone, to them this is a political battle. They want to do everything they can to attack Donald Trump, slow down this policy. I think the Republicans, we want to get things done, and there's a right way to do FISA and I hope that we figure it out this week."

"Yeah, my guess is as the Senate moves really, really slowly, we'll have to have some type of an extension yet. If something suddenly comes together - great. I think you're looking at an extension though."

On passing another reconciliation package:

"Well, I'm sure going to die trying to get this Reconciliation 3.0 on the cost of living - it's going to be things to address the cost of living. So, you think about under Joe Biden, the cost of healthcare, of housing, of childcare - they all went up 50%. So, people are feeling the burn of that, so let's do things that can impact health care. Our lead bill is a price tags bill, forcing every health care provider to list their prices up front, we think that would drive down the cost of health insurance $1,000 a month. So, there's things we can do in housing, there's things that we can do with property insurance as well, and childcare. So, let's use it to focus on the cost of living, maybe even more tax cuts, if that's possible as well."

On handling the spread of the New World Screwworm:

"Yeah, well, we got this. We've been anticipating this moment for several years, as we saw millions of people come out of Central America through Mexico and America, we knew that they were bringing this screwworm back with them. We had it contained to Central America, but we knew it was working up this way. So, we know how to address the situation, your food is safe. We will never let a head of cattle that's infected with this get into the system and go through the processing. It's a very open, fleshy wound, anyone can see this, so we're not going to let it into the system. We've got great treatments out there for it - Ivermectin is one example of what works for it. And then we know how to stop the spread of it as well - it's not spread like COVID or a flu, it's through a cough, it's spread through the screwworm fly that deposits its eggs in an open wound of an animal. And forgive me here for going biology on you, but the screwworm - the female screwworm - all she does is she mates one time, lays eggs, and she dies - so she can only mate one time. And what we do is we grow these male screwworm flies that are sterile. We sterilize them with gamma radiation, they breed together, and then she lays sterile eggs and she dies. So, we had this in the 1960s when I was a young lad, and we were able to get through it then. But we had eradicated, so we stopped these 'screwworm factories' so to speak. But we have one in Panama already, we're building one in Mexico, building one in Texas, it may take us a year. And if I could, here's the economic significance of this right now - typically a million head of cattle come across the border from Mexico every year, live cattle, so we've stopped that. That's about 1/13 of the amount of cattle that we harvest every year, we usually harvest about 13 million, so 1 million of them have stopped. So, on top of just the small supply - the smallest herd we've had in my lifetime in America - we've lost this 1/13 of our supply as well."

On USDA Secretary Rollins' work to fight screwworms:

"It's hard for me to go back through all the history, but from the second I remember talking to Secretary Rollins about this, we started adding more funds to it. So, I know that we've been talking about this, really, right from the very, very early beginnings, we knew what we needed to do. I'm disappointed that the previous administration, the Biden administration, didn't start making these screwworm male laboratories where we're sterilizing these flies, so that's probably where the mistake was as well. So, we can cast the blame - I'd have to really dig in to see who was late when - but what I remember is the previous administration didn't start these laboratories in a timely fashion."

On how the screwworm spreads:

"So, it's two stages - so the fly, it flies around, and then it lays its eggs, which turn into larva, and that's the worm that we have. So typically, how it's transmitted is it gets on probably a deer, a coyote, some type of an animal, maybe it's a pet - that's how it's going to, how it probably crossed the border. That's why we knew it was going to get here as well. So, it's not going to be being coughed on by somebody, it's going to be carried across the border by a live animal, in this case, most likely some type of wild animal."

On addressing rising costs for farmers:

"Well, we may have to help them some more, and we've helped them already, but you nailed it - the number one issue back home is the cost of input costs: it's fertilizers, it's diesel, it's interest rates as well. And this Strait of Hormuz being closed has made fertilizer prices rise again. We saw it, first of all, when Russia invaded Ukraine - for 18 months, it was higher than it is now. But regardless, I think that there's going to have to be some further aid. We've given them $43 billion already; we added $65 billion to the crop insurance fund, $50 billion for rural health transformation as well, but I'm afraid we're going to have to give them some more to get them through this. And all that being said, we are seeing net farm income improve. Under Joe Biden, we saw two years in a row of a record drop in net farm income. Last year we saw it at least turn around a little bit, but we've got more work to do. But I'm afraid that as long as this Strait of Hormuz is closed, we're probably going to have to come back and help the farmers some more."

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